A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing â" dazed but erect â" beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.
It's not just Apple and it's not just OSes, it's everything the suitpigs come up with. Ford FIESTA? Cheetos? Why "Dawn" dish soap when most people wash dishes in the evening? TIDE detergent? SATURN cars? TWAIN and GNU? WINDOWS? iPhone and iPad and iPod and iCantstanditanymore... marketers must be insane.
With all due respects, Dr. Cooper, are you on crack?
-- George Smoot
(Oh, for God's sake, I click the "post anonymously" button 25 minutes after the last comment I post and it says I didn't wait long enough. Good way to spoil a joke... No, I'm not really Dr. Smoot. Posting under my real name is the only way to post this. Are you on slashdot staff, Dr. Cooper?
I certainly hope "your" not really a teacher. If you are, I REALLY feel sorry for "you're" students, because your writing shows a complete and utter lack of literacy.
He was a poet, not a writer. Poetry is no more communication than an abstract painting is. A book written without capitals would take twice as long to read, with half the comprehension. Get rid of punctuation as well and you have a REAL unreadable mess.
Writing is all about communication. Anything that detracts from readability is a detriment to communication. The conventions are there for a purpose -- to make the prose readable.
If you can't take the effort to at least try to follow conventions, I can't take the effort to decipher your aliterate ramblings; not all of us move our lips when we read!
In short, if you don't use caps, what you tell me is that you're a young, ignorant hipster who cares more about being cool than being clear and you have no interest in communication.
I have to agree about the obscenities, as long as they are there for a good purpose and not just to be cool.
What amuses me most is the derision for degrees like Philosophy... here we have a degree where the focus is on logic and critical thinking
Logic and critical thinking? I worked with a fellow who was majoring in philosophy. He postulated that anything he couldn't see didn't exist. Logic? Critical thinking? He turned his back and said "now you don't exist." I proved him wrong by hitting him on the head with a box of popcorn.
That's what's wrong with philosophy; it's adherents are almost as crazy as economists. Logic? Critical thinking? LOL!
It's true that society has devalued writing to the point where adults primarily read teen and young adult garbage, even to the point where they hold up Harry Potter as an example of "good" writing.
Actually, I've read that the best writing is done at a 9th grade reading level. Isaac Asimov wrote his books at an 8th grade level, and his nonfiction was especially good -- clear, concise, easy to read. If you have to slog through it, it's not good writing. If you don't even see the words but instead see what the words convey, that's good writing. If you don't want to put the book down, that's great writing.
There has been a strong anti university undercurrent on/. recently by people who haven't got the first clue about universities.
Back in the old days, most folks at slashdot were educated. Sadly, we nerds have become popular (I never though I'd ever see THAT!), so now apparently high school dropouts and folks with two digit IQs come here spouting nonsense.
Any research professor knows that students almost universally suck at writing papers
To be fair, a lot of researchers suck at it, too. One report I read at work used the word "enumerate" seven times in a single paragraph without once using the word "count". It seems their mantra is "never utilize a single syllable word when a multisyllable word will suffice."
I have never, ever, met of professor in any discpline who considers things like good writing or English degrees worthless.
Neither have I. Probably neither has anyone who ever finished high school. However, most of them can't help being uneducated.
And obviously you did not get any of this 'liberal arts' education, since you could not be bothered to start sentences with capital letters, and use obscenities liberally and unnecessarily in your writing,
Flamebait, my ass. Obviously the aliterate* youngsters who refuse to use proper capitalization and punctuation and other writing conventions have mod points. Me? When I see "the cat's are fighting again. there mice are gone!" I conclude that the writer is an uneducated bore not worth reading. I don't read comments like that.
Someone please mod the mismodded parent back up. And slashdot, please stop giving mod points to aliterates! Maybe a literacy test before mod points are handed out?
* If you think "aliterate" is a misspelling, you probably are one. Look it up in a dictionary.
Actually, "God Particle" was a cencorship by media of the real name. The researcher who came up with it (I don't remember hsi name, I'm terrible with names) called it the "God Damned Particle" because they were having so hard a time finding it. Media won't print the words "god" and "damn" together, so they dropped the "damn".
$300 will buy a new, small laptop. He's 7, he's not going to be playing WoW, an old junker from Goodwill or Salvation Army for $50 will do. I wouldn't put W7 on it, by the time he's old enough for a more expensive computer W7 will be an antique; W98 or XP will be good enough. And I agree, dual boot. If you get used to only Windows when you grow up, learning to use any other OS will seem like an impossibility from slashdot comments I see from young folks. They can't conceive of a file system without C: and D: drives, it drives them nuts trying to figure it out, because all their lives it's "this is how computers work" when only one of all the OSes has backslashes for directories and C: and D: for drives.
Also, we do not even have the experience of building something that can stay 10 years in space without constant support from Earth...
Christ, I haven't seen such bad moderation as today in a long time. Voyager's 35 year anniversary in space is this week and it's still sending data thirty five years later.
You and whoever modded you informative are quite ignorant. Hell, there's a robot on Mars that was planned to be operational for six months, and it's still sending back data five years later.
Doesn't Apple have a patent on non-removable batteries?
The lack of being able to change batteries and the price are the two main reasons I don't have any iStuff. WTF is wrong with you kids? When I was in school, the first rule of design was "form follows function." That seems to have gone right out the window in the last decade or two.
Look, Nokia, I don't buy a phone because it's pretty. I buy one for its capabilities. I don't fucking need pretty tools! I also don't need to impress people with how much money I spend on my tools. I DO need the ability to change the battery, and depending on its internal memory size I may need an external storage (although if it has wifi and bluetooth, I can use any computer for external storage).
Do they build these things with diamond studded screwdrivers? Kids these days, sheesh... This phone is NOT for me!
Your statement flies in the face of reality. If he is an American citizen, and nothing more, just like you, then why does he and his family have Secret Service protection and why are my tax dollars paying for it?
If they really do have his returns and they release them to the public like every other Presidential candidate in the last half century has done, they're diong a public service.
If they're looking for extortion money or a ransom, then they're criminals.
They're not talking about sending people to the stars unless you somehow get around the lightspeed barrier; at half light speed it would take eight years to get to Alpha Proxima. Then, you need to find a planet/satellite with the right mass, the right atmosphere, and the right temperature, and there are only a few dozen stars within fifty or so light years. It would be easier to terraform Venus and Mars than to find another planet around another star.
One, the first sentence is incorrect and has been since the seventies. Secondly, there aren't hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by properly prescribed drugs. Thirdly, he would replace drugs proven effective with placebos???
It's marked "troll" because it's trolling for responses with its inaccuracy; it begs to be corrected.
What I'd like to know is what twelve year old modded him "insightful"? There was no insight whatever.
phones CAN get too small (form factors for most things don't tolerate being shrunk too much).
The smallest phone I had was about two inches by about two and a half; my old razr was a tiny but longer but thinner. Today's phones are way too big, I need one to fit in my pants pocket. It's getting so I can't find a pocket-sized phone any more.
As to the memory card, as long as it has enough memory to hold a day's worth and it has bluetooth and/or wifi, I don't see the need for one.
I'm continually amazed at the clever hacks NASA engineers come up with, like making a new tool out of other tools and a toothbrush. They saved the Apollo 13 astronauts from carbon dioxide poisoning with duct tape, among other things, and used a lunar lander as a return vehicle.
Just as manatees are "sea cows", narwals are "sea unicorns." How do you know that the Homo floresiensis didn't have a pot of gold buried under a rainbow? Maybe they immigrated to Indonesia from Ireland!
Slashdot Mirror
PS: This is what Cummings' prose looked like:
It's not just Apple and it's not just OSes, it's everything the suitpigs come up with. Ford FIESTA? Cheetos? Why "Dawn" dish soap when most people wash dishes in the evening? TIDE detergent? SATURN cars? TWAIN and GNU? WINDOWS? iPhone and iPad and iPod and iCantstanditanymore... marketers must be insane.
With all due respects, Dr. Cooper, are you on crack?
-- George Smoot
(Oh, for God's sake, I click the "post anonymously" button 25 minutes after the last comment I post and it says I didn't wait long enough. Good way to spoil a joke... No, I'm not really Dr. Smoot. Posting under my real name is the only way to post this. Are you on slashdot staff, Dr. Cooper?
Oh, BTW, BAZINGA!
I certainly hope "your" not really a teacher. If you are, I REALLY feel sorry for "you're" students, because your writing shows a complete and utter lack of literacy.
And obviously you've never heard of ee cummings.
He was a poet, not a writer. Poetry is no more communication than an abstract painting is. A book written without capitals would take twice as long to read, with half the comprehension. Get rid of punctuation as well and you have a REAL unreadable mess.
Writing is all about communication. Anything that detracts from readability is a detriment to communication. The conventions are there for a purpose -- to make the prose readable.
If you can't take the effort to at least try to follow conventions, I can't take the effort to decipher your aliterate ramblings; not all of us move our lips when we read!
In short, if you don't use caps, what you tell me is that you're a young, ignorant hipster who cares more about being cool than being clear and you have no interest in communication.
I have to agree about the obscenities, as long as they are there for a good purpose and not just to be cool.
What amuses me most is the derision for degrees like Philosophy... here we have a degree where the focus is on logic and critical thinking
Logic and critical thinking? I worked with a fellow who was majoring in philosophy. He postulated that anything he couldn't see didn't exist. Logic? Critical thinking? He turned his back and said "now you don't exist." I proved him wrong by hitting him on the head with a box of popcorn.
That's what's wrong with philosophy; it's adherents are almost as crazy as economists. Logic? Critical thinking? LOL!
You didn't get the pun in his name? Hint: The taco is pink.
Forgive my ignorance, but what's a "built point"?
It's true that society has devalued writing to the point where adults primarily read teen and young adult garbage, even to the point where they hold up Harry Potter as an example of "good" writing.
Actually, I've read that the best writing is done at a 9th grade reading level. Isaac Asimov wrote his books at an 8th grade level, and his nonfiction was especially good -- clear, concise, easy to read. If you have to slog through it, it's not good writing. If you don't even see the words but instead see what the words convey, that's good writing. If you don't want to put the book down, that's great writing.
There has been a strong anti university undercurrent on /. recently by people who haven't got the first clue about universities.
Back in the old days, most folks at slashdot were educated. Sadly, we nerds have become popular (I never though I'd ever see THAT!), so now apparently high school dropouts and folks with two digit IQs come here spouting nonsense.
Any research professor knows that students almost universally suck at writing papers
To be fair, a lot of researchers suck at it, too. One report I read at work used the word "enumerate" seven times in a single paragraph without once using the word "count". It seems their mantra is "never utilize a single syllable word when a multisyllable word will suffice."
I have never, ever, met of professor in any discpline who considers things like good writing or English degrees worthless.
Neither have I. Probably neither has anyone who ever finished high school. However, most of them can't help being uneducated.
And obviously you did not get any of this 'liberal arts' education, since you could not be bothered to start sentences with capital letters, and use obscenities liberally and unnecessarily in your writing,
Flamebait, my ass. Obviously the aliterate* youngsters who refuse to use proper capitalization and punctuation and other writing conventions have mod points. Me? When I see "the cat's are fighting again. there mice are gone!" I conclude that the writer is an uneducated bore not worth reading. I don't read comments like that.
Someone please mod the mismodded parent back up. And slashdot, please stop giving mod points to aliterates! Maybe a literacy test before mod points are handed out?
* If you think "aliterate" is a misspelling, you probably are one. Look it up in a dictionary.
*Phew!* That was close... I buy almost everything with cash, post sci-fi stories on slashdot featuring "stratodoobers", and vote Green or Libbie.
However, I'm not completely human (part of my left eye is an artificial machine), so as a cyborg I guess I'm safe!
Actually, "God Particle" was a cencorship by media of the real name. The researcher who came up with it (I don't remember hsi name, I'm terrible with names) called it the "God Damned Particle" because they were having so hard a time finding it. Media won't print the words "god" and "damn" together, so they dropped the "damn".
God damned MSM censors...
As Neo leaves the monkey house at the zoo...
"I know Flung Poo!"
For the young folks who don't realize that's a typo and you hit the R by mistake, it's a slide rule. It wouldn't hurt to bring them back, either.
$300 will buy a new, small laptop. He's 7, he's not going to be playing WoW, an old junker from Goodwill or Salvation Army for $50 will do. I wouldn't put W7 on it, by the time he's old enough for a more expensive computer W7 will be an antique; W98 or XP will be good enough. And I agree, dual boot. If you get used to only Windows when you grow up, learning to use any other OS will seem like an impossibility from slashdot comments I see from young folks. They can't conceive of a file system without C: and D: drives, it drives them nuts trying to figure it out, because all their lives it's "this is how computers work" when only one of all the OSes has backslashes for directories and C: and D: for drives.
Also, we do not even have the experience of building something that can stay 10 years in space without constant support from Earth...
Christ, I haven't seen such bad moderation as today in a long time. Voyager's 35 year anniversary in space is this week and it's still sending data thirty five years later.
You and whoever modded you informative are quite ignorant. Hell, there's a robot on Mars that was planned to be operational for six months, and it's still sending back data five years later.
Doesn't Apple have a patent on non-removable batteries?
The lack of being able to change batteries and the price are the two main reasons I don't have any iStuff. WTF is wrong with you kids? When I was in school, the first rule of design was "form follows function." That seems to have gone right out the window in the last decade or two.
Look, Nokia, I don't buy a phone because it's pretty. I buy one for its capabilities. I don't fucking need pretty tools! I also don't need to impress people with how much money I spend on my tools. I DO need the ability to change the battery, and depending on its internal memory size I may need an external storage (although if it has wifi and bluetooth, I can use any computer for external storage).
Do they build these things with diamond studded screwdrivers? Kids these days, sheesh... This phone is NOT for me!
Your statement flies in the face of reality. If he is an American citizen, and nothing more, just like you, then why does he and his family have Secret Service protection and why are my tax dollars paying for it?
If they really do have his returns and they release them to the public like every other Presidential candidate in the last half century has done, they're diong a public service.
If they're looking for extortion money or a ransom, then they're criminals.
They're not talking about sending people to the stars unless you somehow get around the lightspeed barrier; at half light speed it would take eight years to get to Alpha Proxima. Then, you need to find a planet/satellite with the right mass, the right atmosphere, and the right temperature, and there are only a few dozen stars within fifty or so light years. It would be easier to terraform Venus and Mars than to find another planet around another star.
Why is this moded troll?
One, the first sentence is incorrect and has been since the seventies. Secondly, there aren't hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by properly prescribed drugs. Thirdly, he would replace drugs proven effective with placebos???
It's marked "troll" because it's trolling for responses with its inaccuracy; it begs to be corrected.
What I'd like to know is what twelve year old modded him "insightful"? There was no insight whatever.
phones CAN get too small (form factors for most things don't tolerate being shrunk too much).
The smallest phone I had was about two inches by about two and a half; my old razr was a tiny but longer but thinner. Today's phones are way too big, I need one to fit in my pants pocket. It's getting so I can't find a pocket-sized phone any more.
As to the memory card, as long as it has enough memory to hold a day's worth and it has bluetooth and/or wifi, I don't see the need for one.
tl;dr version: robots can't hack.
I'm continually amazed at the clever hacks NASA engineers come up with, like making a new tool out of other tools and a toothbrush. They saved the Apollo 13 astronauts from carbon dioxide poisoning with duct tape, among other things, and used a lunar lander as a return vehicle.
It's a Bugblatter of Trall cookbook, partly plagairized from How to Serve Pork.
Just as manatees are "sea cows", narwals are "sea unicorns." How do you know that the Homo floresiensis didn't have a pot of gold buried under a rainbow? Maybe they immigrated to Indonesia from Ireland!
I fully agree about the poetry of physics.